We have an enduring fascination with trying to pick election results before they happen.

And we are nearly always spot on, or at the very least, very close.

So here we go.

Turnout will be very high, and will be the first news story of the night.

A high turnout might suggest a sudden last minute surge for Sanders in the Democrat primary, but we believe the Democrat primary will be won by Hillary Clinton, shading the insurgent Sanders. The more overblown predictions of a Sanders victory will, we think, be shown to be wishful thinking by his supporters and progressives generally, as enough Iowans consider who can actually defeat the Republicans in a general election.

In this, Donald “Bogeyman” Trump and the perennially unpleasant Ted Cruz are actually helping the Democrat establishment to encourage people to coalesce around Clinton.

But Sanders will do well amongst students and young people particularly, and cannot be counted out entirely yet.

Of course last time round she got a nasty shock when she surprisingly got beaten by Barrack Obama.

With Iowans, anything’s possible, but the talk afterwards will be, we think, of how the Democrats folded in behind Hillary when push came to shove. Sanders will, however, fight on, so that the Democratic nomination isn’t just a coronation.

On the Republican side we expect Trump to beat Cruz. That said, Cruz will poll more strongly in the evangelical and country areas where a lot of Iowans live, and where caucusing is a particular social and well-regarded event. So don’t discount a win by Cruz, even though we think Trump will do better. You might see a city/country split between these two, which would be interesting in its implications for the whole Republican race and the ultimate general election.

We expect the big story of the night on the right, though, will be a better than expected showing by Marco Rubio, who we think (have thought for some time) has an excellent chance of being the party’s eventual pick. We wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him poll 15-20%, or even, at a pinch, higher. And interestingly Cruz has turned to criticising Rubio in recent days, perhaps a reflection of a calculation that he is leaking votes to him while Trump’s supporters are staying mainly true to him. But this will be the day that Rubio really “arrives”.

And Trump and Cruz? What would they take out of the night when one of them wins?

Pay close attention to Bremer County. This particular collection of 24,000 Iowans have chosen the right President in the last 9 Presidential elections.

There are any number of good ways to follow the results as they come in, if you are a fellow election tragic. This is one of the better ones, and not being American it will hopefully be a bit less biased and a bit more informative.

U.S. Sen. John McCain hasn’t decided whether he’ll run for a sixth term, but the former GOP presidential nominee said Tuesday that the Arizona Republican Party’s censure of him over the weekend may just have provided the motivation to seek office again.

The censure vote came during a meeting of state committee members who cited McCain’s voting record as being insufficiently conservative.

The members said McCain has lent his support to issues “associated with liberal Democrats,” such as immigration reform and funding President Barack Obama’s federal health care law.

In response Tuesday, McCain said he has a strong conservative voting record and led the fight in the Senate against Obama’s health care plan. He blames the censure on uninformed “extremist” party elements, and said, if anything, it only bolsters his consideration to run for a sixth term in 2016, the year he turns 80.

“If there’s such a thing as motivation to more seriously consider it, it’s what just happened,” McCain told The Associated Press.

Timothy Schwartz, the Arizona Legislative District 30 Republican chairman who helped write the censure resolution, said the vote showed that McCain was losing support from his own party. But McCain called the censure “ludicrous.”

“It shows that, again, a very extremist element of the party has taken over the party apparatus,” he said, adding that polling shows he maintains strong support in Arizona from Republicans, Democrats and independents.

“I’ve won every race I’ve run and I’m proud of my record, and if I run again, I am totally confident of re-election,” McCain said.

In a Facebook post this week, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and McCain’s 2008 running mate, defended the senator as “an American hero and a friend.”

Palin said McCain has helped lead the fight in Congress against the “far left agenda.”

McCain was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982 and won his Senate seat in 1986.

He unsuccessfully sought the presidency in 2008 then easily won another Senate term in 2010. He has challenged Obama on foreign policy but has worked with Democrats on immigration legislation, noting “70 percent of the people in Arizona want to see comprehensive immigration reform.”

(From AP)

At the Wellthisiswhatithink desk we have been warning for years that the GOP has made itself unelectable by refusing to rein in its wide-eyed Tea Party loons. This is just one more example. For America to prosper it needs a credible opposition, for the health of democracy in the most important democratic nation on earth we need America to have a credible opposition, and the disheartened rump of the old moderate GOP with a lunatic quasi-libertarian right grafted onto it is emphatically not it.

In short: the extreme right in America is seeking to take over the Republican Party because it knows it can never take control on its own. The fight against the Trotskyites in the British Labor Party in the 70s and 80s was an identical process which nearly killed that great party off, and the Republicans face a similar fight to reclaim their soul.

Like any long-term politician, McCain’s record in office is patchy, but there can be no doubt he represents a significant majority of the voters in his home state. He is also old enough and bold enough to tell it like it is. With luck, he and others will face down those who are determined to turn America into a “culture wars” battleground of religious v non-religious, men v women, employed v unemployed, and white v everyone else. America deserves better.

1867 drawing of newly-freed black men voting. Women would not get the vote until 1920. Near-total resistance to blacks voting went on in some areas well into the 1960s. In some states, it appears to persist to this day.

A clutch of vital swing states (run by Republicans) are under the microscope for the efforts they are making to ensure it is so hard as to almost be impossible for hundreds of thousands of EX prisoners to vote in the Presidential election.

Needless to say, the vast majority of these ex inmates are black. They’re likely to favour a black President. You do the math …

Just another example why “the greatest democracy in the world” is actually a democracy basket case.

As UPI report from Washington, civil rights activists stepped up efforts this week to allow more than 1.5 million voting-eligible felons in Florida — and millions more nationwide — access to elections, urging that laws they see as discriminatory need to be changed.

“Keep in mind that two-thirds are not in a prison cell right now,” said Hilary O. Shelton, senior vice president for advocacy at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Nearly 6 million – 6 million, overwhelmingly poor, overwhelmingly black – American felons have no voting rights, says the Sentencing Project, a non-profit group that works on criminal justice reform issues. Florida leads the nation with the highest rate per capita of disenfranchised felons.

In swing states like Florida and Virginia, another state with a large number of disenfranchised felons, those votes could well make the difference in close elections. The deadline to register for the November election is Tuesday in Florida and Oct. 15 in Virginia.

Advocates say they worry the laws are part of larger voter suppression efforts, some designed to keep minorities from casting ballots this fall.

The NAACP launched a national campaign against felon disenfranchisement Tuesday in Tallahassee, Fla. The group is seeking changes in laws that keep felons from voting.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who sits on the state’s executive clemency board, calls the practice fair to law-abiding citizens and victims of crime.

“It is reasonable to ask felons to apply to have their rights restored and to demonstrate rehabilitation by living crime-free during a waiting period after the completion of their sentences,” said an official in Bondi’s office.

But laws governing the restoration of voting rights vary by state, making this an uneven playing field at best. Most U.S. states restore felons’ voting rights automatically after completion of their prison term, parole or probation. Several states allow prisoners with misdemeanor convictions to cast absentee ballots.

But some states with right-wing governors have been rolling back voting rights for felons.

“The problem is the Florida Constitution,” said Randy Berg, the executive director of the Florida Justice Institute, a public interest law firm in Miami. He cited a provision added in 1865 that hasn’t been repealed.

“Legislators refuse to change the rules on clemency,” Berg said.

Scott’s administration rescinded a more liberal policy for felons in March 2011. Florida now requires felons to wait 5-7 years before they can apply for restoration of civil rights. So much for paying your debt to society.

In a statement from Scott’s office, ex-felons must demonstrate “willingness to request to have their rights restored.”

In 2011, 13,000 ex-felons applied for civil rights restoration.

But since Scott’s administration amended the law, fewer than 300 ex-felons have voting rights restored.

Under the earlier policy introduced in 2007 by Gov. Charlie Crist, who was then also a Republican, 155,000 ex-felons had their voting rights restored.

In Iowa, Republican Gov. Terry Branstad rescinded a law in 2011 to automatically restore voter rights, which was instituted in 2005 by former Gov. Tom Vilsack, a Democrat who is now the U.S. secretary of Agriculture.

The danger with executive clemency law is reflected in changes depending on administration.

In Virginia, Shelton said, “If the governor wasn’t so moved, (the) people’s rights could not be restored.”

Natural justice surely demands that EX felons should have their civil rights restored.

Thirty-one percent of all voting-age African-American men in Virginia are disenfranchised because of felony records, Shelton said.

Let’s just run that fact again. Thirty-one per cent of all black men in Virginia cannot vote.

Nearly one in three. So much for the land of the free.

Disenfranchisement after criminal conviction remains the most significant barrier to voting rights. Nationally, 5.3 million American citizens are not allowed to vote because of a criminal conviction – 4 million of whom live, work, and raise families in their communities.

Two states — Vermont and Maine — don’t disenfranchise felons. Prisoners registered to vote in Vermont, regardless of where they are incarcerated, may submit absentee ballots.

An official in the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office called voting part of the restorative process. Community educators conduct voter registration drives in prisons to ensure that prisoners can participate in elections.

Neither Vermont nor Maine maintain records on how many prisoners register to vote because many use addresses from prior to incarceration.

The NAACP, in cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, provides former felons with information upon release on how to regain voting rights. Additionally, the organization maintains prison units in Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Mississippi and Missouri for providing absentee ballots.

One can only hope at least some of those disenfranchised by these outrageous tactics can have their rights restored promptly, but time is probably against them. They will stand by and watch the process take place without them.

Rehabilitation? Don’t make me laugh. We are creating a permanent black underclass in parts of America. Don’t be surprised when they bite back. It won’t be pretty.